Defender of the Future
Book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Five

Ecco was silent; stunned. His heart was still hammering with the aftermath of the chase. He had never felt this shocked and frightened; never before in his life. If the monsters had been just a little quicker! --But had he escaped from the hook to be caught in the net? He became aware of the pressing need for air, and turned towards the surface, but something dark and unimaginably huge rolled over and lazily blocked his way. Remembering tales he had heard of the ferocity of the sperm whales, and the way in which those giant jaws had crushed the too-slow foe, Ecco backfinned in the dark.

A deep and ancient voice, patient and sleepy with the strength of fifty years and more, rumbled through the water all around him.

"Th'art a long way from thy home, little starbrow."

Ecco relaxed just a little; there was no anger in the voice of the whale, just a kind of lazy, benevolent curiosity.

"Yes, sir," he said deferentially, unsure how else he should react to the monster. Dolphins tended to get along with the great sperm whales--but only because they were generally too small to be noticed by such leviathans. Then, too, the sperm whales spent much of their time in the lightless depths, where dolphins never swam unless driven to it. Ecco was trespassing on the whales' territory.

The sperm whale, though, said nothing regarding his narrow escape, or the monsters that had been chasing him. Ecco felt the wash of water against his body as a vast bulk turned slowly in the darkness, and for a wild moment he considered a dash for escape--but the whale forestalled him.

"'Tis a long way down here for the likes of thee, little starbrow, and th'art short of breath by now. Wiltow ascend with me?"

Ecco didn't see what else he could do; the sperm whale could have easily bitten him in two. Certainly it was one of the hugest and most powerful creatures in the entire sea; and, too, it seemed to dislike the monsters as much as he did at this time. They would hardly dare to approach him while he swam at the side of the giant, and indeed he could not hear so much as the faintest echo of their screeching in the deep waters. While the whale was well disposed towards him, it would be useful to take advantage of his gigantic protector. Without speaking, Ecco fell into formation with the whale as it began to move, slowly and sedately in the direction of the far-off surface. Soon the first faint light began to fall on them both, and he saw a gleam of far-off sunlight reflected in the whale's dark abyssal eye.

The sperm whale swam slower than Ecco would have liked: he was desperate to breathe by now. But whenever he tried to forge ahead, the great eye rolled alarmingly in his direction so that, intimidated, he fell back into line again. The water continued to lighten slowly, and he was soon able to get his first good look at his rescuer: he wasn't disappointed. The whale seemed even bigger visually than it had on his sonar--it was a true giant of the seas, and a hundred dolphins could have fit within that cavernous frame. The whale's hide was crisscrossed with the circular scars of kraken, and Ecco saw that it was a male.

The surface twinkled above them, but the whale did not speed its pace even in the slightest; it was as inexorable as the tides. At last he could bear their slow progress no more, and shot past the behemoth like an arrow from a bow. He broke through the water with an almighty leap, feeling dizzy; he took a great ragged breath, then another almost immediately after as his oxygen-starved muscles demanded more replenishment. Exhausted, he hung at the water's surface as the sperm whale floated up beneath him, an immense scarred shadow dappled with late sunlight and the marks of a hundred blind battles.

The sperm whale blew, a roaring exhalation that shot spray many feet into the air and made Ecco's ears ring. He was silent for several long minutes, only lying in the water with his great dark eye fixed thoughtfully on Ecco. Slowly the dolphin felt his body returning to normal: the desperate drive to breathe was fading. He turned towards the whale, quailing a little at the stern look in the gargantuan eye; and then he waited.

The whale paused a few more seconds before he spoke. His words were as ponderous as his bulk, and had much of the same sleepy confidence; he feared nothing in the sea, and didn't care who knew it. "My apologies for trying thee so, little starbrow, but to rise with speed after such a dive would have killed thee outright."

"Thank you, sir," Ecco answered uneasily--uncertain what exactly to make of the leviathan before him. The whale's tone was jovial almost, certainly friendly, but he was intimidated by the size and by the slow, dignified prose. Corse had often warned him away from speaking to whales without good cause, even the small and silly minke whales that they occasionally saw near the bay. Not our type, whales--they know too much about things better left forgotten.

The whale rolled one eye towards him, seeming amused at his nervousness. "I would have words with thee a while, cousin," came the deep rumble, mildly. "Let us swim together."

Still no reference to the monsters... Greatly wondering, Ecco stayed by the whale's side as the great beast began to swim, steadily south. Bow-waves trailed out either side of the huge wedge-shaped snout, the current thus formed unsettling the dolphin who had to move a length or so away in order to avoid being pulled under. They were quiet for a long time, hearing only the smooth hissing of the water against their bodies, and the occasional slap of spray as the sperm whale's flukes came down flat on the surface.

"Sir," Ecco whistled finally, keeping his tone as deferential as he could, "thank you for saving me. I--I'm sorry if I interrupted you--you know, at your, uh, meal--"

There was an amused rumble from the whale.

Ecco paused, waiting for a response. "I'm Ecco," he said at last, wondering whether there was something else he was supposed to say. Corse had neglected to inform him of the accepted etiquette when addressing a sperm whale who had just saved your life.

The whale did not slow. "I am called Castor."

There was another long pause. Ecco kept pace beside the majestic hunter. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask a question, when his rescuer spoke again.

"Tell me, little starbrow, for I am curious--what manner of creature was it that came after thee?" There was a strange tone in Castor's voice, as if this was in some way a test. Ecco remembered Corse's advice: Be Sincere--he hoped that that held true for sperm whales as well as blue whales. In any case, he did not wish to lie to this great beast.

"Sir, I don't know," he answered softly. "But they took my family, and they've been chasing me ever since. That's the second time I had to flee from them..."

"Hr'm!" Castor whuffed out air, seeming satisfied with the answer. "I thought so, I thought so. So, they have returned at last... I knew something was wrong. There is whispering in the deeps. Well, well, this is a poor omen indeed..."

Omen? "Do you--do you know about them?" Ecco whistled timidly. "The creature you destroyed--you crushed it--have you seen them before?"

"Nay, not I, little starbrow." The whale rolled, languorously trailing the tip of one fin through the still evening air. "I have never seen them, but yet I know them for what they are. My people still sing songs under the dark heavens--songs of things long past." The dark eye turned towards him for a moment. "We have long memories, cousin."

"So--what are they?" Ecco asked, gathering courage from the whale's readiness to answer. "Where did they come from and why did they take my pod? Who is this foe?"

"Not foe, little cousin, but Foe. We know them by no other name." Castor turned slowly in the water, altering his direction a little; Ecco hurried to catch up. "That is who they are. Thy other questions--the what, the where and the why--they are not so easy to answer. And ye may not wish to hear the answer."

Ecco felt a heat in him. "Sir," he said, "they kidnapped my family. I want to fight them. I will fight them, if I have to."

"Hr'm!" Castor blew again, thunderously; it reminded Ecco that he too needed air, and he took a breath of his own beside the whale's mountainous shoulder. "So ye intend to oppose the Foe," the whale remarked in his slow, sleepy voice. "That is good, good... but not a task to be undertaken lightly, with a lot of chatter."

"I'll do what's needed," Ecco said bravely. "Just tell me what you know... sir," he added swiftly.

Castor did not appear to have noticed his momentary slip. The sperm whale dipped underwater with barely a ripple, having finished his long breath. Ecco followed, and they cruised together through the open water, ten feet or so below the surface.

"The Foe came here before," Castor said, "many years ago. None there are among us who could remember so far back, but the songs have been passed down. My people no longer sing them, but the gentle humpbacks do, underneath the full moon. We honor the memory of one who defeated the Foe in their own realm." The whale glanced towards him. "A dolphin, little starbrow, and one who bore the markings of a lone-swimmer."

"A dolphin? A dolphin defeated the Foe?" This was news to Ecco. He let out an excited squeal. "Then I can fight them! Tell me how!"

"Alas," Castor said heavily, "I know not. But I will sing thee that which I do know, if that is thy wish. It may lead thee into blacker places than the Crushing Dark before thy family is freed."

"Tell me," Ecco said softly.

The whale glanced at him again, then slowly rose up towards the surface. He blew again, explosively--Ecco saw his huge sides shiver as he took in more air, and heard the rushing of it in the giant lungs. Slow and graceful, Castor slipped down into the water again, and Ecco swam beside him.

"The tale of Tidesinger," Castor said at last, by way of introduction, and then, to Ecco's wonder and fascination, the great sperm whale began to sing.

It was a long time ago, and the world was a very different place. Different beasts swam the seas, and there were different shores along the coasts. The shark-god Carcharodon lived, then, feeding his insatiable hunger on the whales who were then new to the waters. Into this far-off time was born one whom we know now only as Tidesinger.

He was the son of a dolphin who carried stars upon his back and, though he swam with the pack as any dolphin would in the seas that held Carcharodon the Mighty, he had a great urge to explore. Often he would go off by himself, and return with the scent of unfamiliar waters. The others tried to prevent him, but he would not be dissuaded--the moment someone's eyes were elsewhere, Tidesinger was gone. Legend says that he learned the secret lore of the Ocean, that he hid himself in a deep cleft and actually spoke with Carcharodon himself, but in truth we shall never know.

By the time that he was an adult and of mating age, Tidesinger had many great deeds to his name, and he was fearless and strong. Stars shone on his body, the legacy of his strange father. Some have even said that they glowed under the moonlight, just a little.

So lived the dolphin pod, young and new under the stars. And so lived Tidesinger, never quite an outcast but certainly looked down upon by his tribe's elders. He cared nothing for that: he was strong and brave and could outswim anything in the sea.

One fateful night, there appeared a new star in the sky, and as the peoples of the waters watched, it fell. It landed somewhere in the far north, where the ice floes crack and creak and the great blue whales sing songs of sleep, and there was a great rushing and a wave. And nothing more was heard for a long time--many months indeed.

But then things started to happen. Creatures disappeared without trace, without leaving even a scale or song to mark their passing. Had it been one or two--but entire families went, dolphins and whales alike.

And then the Foe made their first appearance, hungry and dreadful as even Carcharodon was not. They raged through the seas, turning the water red, and everything fell before them. Even mighty Carcharodon was destroyed, and though this broke the ancient power of the shark-people and made the waters safe for our descendants, the Foe were more terrible still than the shark-god had been, and they filled the waters with a great wailing and sorrow.

Tidesinger saw from afar, from the hot waters of a southern bay, and he was angry. When the Foe came for him, he sang songs which he had learned on his long travels. The legends say that he could freeze them in place with a song, or even burst them apart with a word. He fought his way forward through waters stained with blood, and then he dived deeper than any had gone before, past the krakens and the strange angler fish, right to the bottom of the deepest ocean which is dead and dark and too cold even to freeze solid. And there he found the Foe.

What marvel was done there we do not know--the whales can go little more than halfway down, and we have never seen the seabed. But word has come up, little by little, over the years. Tidesinger found the Foe's lair, and he entered, and he destroyed them utterly. Defeated, the remaining Foe fled upwards through the dark water, and Tidesinger gave chase. Swift as a shark he followed them up through black into blue. The Foe, greatly fearing, quit the waters and made to escape into the heavens.

"And then?" Ecco prompted, after a few minutes. His skin was still tingling with the power of Castor's mighty voice; he had felt it rumbling in his ribcage, shaking the water like thunder. But the whale had broken off suddenly, and now swam in silence.

"I know not," Castor answered at long last. There was resignment in the great whale's tone. "I suppose they escaped after all. There is more to the tale than I can tell thee; the lore is lost after so long. The humpbacks sing of Tidesinger calling down the moon, but--" He snorted heavily and surfaced to blow again. When Ecco's ears had stopped ringing, the whale went on, "--Humpbacks are poets and given to wild embellishment. I do not see how, even with his power of voice, Tidesinger could sing the moon to do his bidding."

Ecco frowned slightly, wondering--there it was again, that odd idea of singing to the moon. Corse had mentioned it. Irritated, he rose and breathed. All this mystic stuff was making his head spin... stars, sky-dolphins, lone-swimmers, the moon...

Syuuii!

Corse had mentioned this! He remembered now--Corse had said that a lone-swimmer had driven back the Foe! Had he meant Tidesinger? Did the dolphins too have their legends about this mysterious being? Ecco felt his heart thumping in his chest at the very thought. Tidesinger had been a lone-swimmer--his own father was one. Perhaps the lone-swimmers knew something more, something Corse and Castor could not tell him.

"I have heard some of this story before," he said reluctantly, "just recently. Castor... tell me, please... is it really true?"

"About Tidesinger?" The whale curled his tail-flukes in the cetacean equivalent of a shrug. "If only we knew... it is likely that he was a myth created to explain a simple delphine alliance, a figurehead for an ancient near-forgotten war." There was a pause. "But for myself, I believe. There are few things in this world upon which both whales and sharks agree, but this legend is one of them."

"I wish I knew more," Ecco said with a sigh. "I'm sure that defeating the Foe has something to do with this singing-to-the-moon business. But Castor--do you know of anyone who might be able to tell me how to fight them?"

"So ye still want to fight, after everything I have told thee." Castor dipped his head slightly. "Ye have courage enough for ten, little starbrow. I must respect that." He paused, and then let out a stream of bubbles. "Yes..." he said thoughtfully. "Yes, there is one who might know more--but seeking out that one will be a test in itself, young Ecco. I would not do so willingly."

Ecco quailed. If the mighty sperm whale was afraid, then what should he do?

"Ye must travel south," Castor said slowly, paying no attention to the dolphin's unease. "Into the warmer waters, and long past the equatorial line. There is a great place where the rocks are high and the seals chatter noisily in the tide-pools. The Cape of Good Hope, it was called once. There ye shall find one called Greshruk the Slayer, who, if legend holds true, was a calf when Tidesinger swam the seas. From Greshruk ye may learn more--if ye survive the encounter. Ye will need all thy wits about thee."

"Greshruk the Slayer," Ecco whistled carefully, paying particular attention to the way the strange name sounded. It didn't sound too good. "How will I know him when I see him?"

"I know not," Castor answered heavily. "I have never seen the Slayer, nor do I know who or what Greshruk is exactly. The sharks hold the Slayer in great reverence, but they will not speak of such things to air-breathers. When you reach the cape, ask the seals for help--they live their lives alongside Greshruk and will know the best thing to do."

Ecco nodded slowly, thinking it through. "South, to the Cape of Good Hope, and then ask the seals about Greshruk the Slayer. Got it." He blinked up at the huge whale. "Castor... thank you for everything."

The sperm whale looked at him for a long moment, then rose and blew again. "If the Foe falls, young Ecco, I think it is we who will be singing thy thanks." He paused. "I must leave thee now, cousin. A lone-swimmer am I by chance and not by choice. I shall head east now across the ocean, to rejoin my own pod."

Ecco nodded in understanding.

"Good-bye, cousin," Castor said formally, "and good luck with thy quest. I shall sing thy name to the moon, and--who knows--perhaps she will listen."

The great whale turned in the water, graceful as a bird in the air, and slowly swam away. Ecco watched the gigantic shape fade into shadow until it was gone. "Bye, Castor," he whistled softly.

There was not a sound of Foe in the water. Above, in the sky, the stars shone like beacons. Ecco poked his snout out of the water and saw the constellation that mirrored his own stars; it was shining very brightly. The moon was just peeking above the horizon.

He turned, following his instincts, and began to swim swiftly south, through the open water.